Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.


So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.


Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.


Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?


Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.


from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry

My Life Has Been The Poem

"My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it." - Thoreau

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night, at the least sound
In fear of what my life
And my childrens' lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests
In his beauty, on the water
And the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still waters.
I feel above me the day blind stars
Waiting, with their light.
And, for a time, I rest
In the grace of the world
And am free.

Wendell Berry

Who'd have thought that a poem about despair could be so inspiring. But, really, this poem is about a kind of release from despair.

When I was in High School, I wrote this:

How frustrated and helpless I am.
You ask why
And, so do I.
And, then, I go outside
For a walk
And Mother Nature's cold,
Cold wind
Blows all my cares
Right through me.

Wendell Berry was infinitely more articulate and, when I was introduced to "The Peace of Wild Things" it took me a while to see that he was expressing something that I had tried to express ten or 15 years earlier. I think that the common theme is nature's healing power and it's ability to help us transcend the tendency to "tax our lives with forethought of grief".